This story is from 2018 I think.
I have fished in this river my whole life. The boat is mine, the permit is mine, the site is mine. I am the captain. Darren is fishing with me. We are up river for low water, as usual, and the fucking wind is coming up. It is gusting like a bitch out there. We don’t know if we should just bag it and go home, but my parents are pressuring us to stay up there. Dad said it sounds worse than it actually is. Darren and I are like, yeah okay. We set the net and we wait to pick up. By the time we’re done picking up low water the wind is howling. The Rose Bud (our house boat that we used to tie up to all the time) is dancing around like big cork anchored in the water. The south east wind is blowing the boat cockeyed and towards the sand bar that the other end of the net is anchored at. This is going to be a rough one. I need to pull the anchor up at the end of the net and get out of there before the wind blows me onto the bar, it’s no time to mess around. We get the hook and snag the tag line on the anchor, Darren pulls it in as I reel the anchor up. As soon as Darren sees that the anchor and line is clear from the prop, I gun it. It’s all about precision and carefulness. We have to make sure the line is clear and I have to make sure the throttle is down before I put the boat in gear. The wind is gusting and we are backwards in the wind and tide. The river is mad, spraying over top of our heads with each wave. I punch it and we make it out of there before we hit the bar. But we’re not done yet.
Darren wants to get his skiff from the Rose Bud, so I need to figure out how I am going to pull up to it while it’s bouncing around. I am idling up to it and trying to make the perfect landing, but the wind and tide is pushing on the boat so hard I am literally just sitting in one spot, even though the boat is in gear. I rev it up and go forward and the Rose Bud turns as I am trying to pull up to it. I am trying to get away from it and maneuver the boat away while at the same time trying to set it up so I can still get us tied up so Darren can get his skiff. Instead, I ram into the Rose Bud and break the back window with the anchor on the bow of the boat. WOW! I am ready to cry, what a massive fail. I am pissed. Different game plan, Darren isn’t going to leave his skiff sitting up here. I have to pull up to the skiff and let him jump in it, like my dad did with me. OOOOOH, it’s my first time doing this. I am scared of ramming Darren’s skiff and I am scared of not lining it up right and hurting him when he tries to jump in. I pull up to it as calmly as possible while the wind whips, the waves crash, and the Rose Bud just keeps on dancing. I manage to get it perfect and Darren jumps into the skiff, starts the motor, and unties the skiff from the Rose Bud and drives it up beside me so he can tie it off and get back on the boat and hang it off the stern.
We finally do that and start heading down river. I take the “back trail” which goes straight to Uncle Herb’s spot before I turn out towards the narrows. I am stressed out and all I can think of is how shitty a ride this is going to be. I know what happens in the narrows during a south east and its never good. Usually when the wind is with the tide, it’s calmer than against the tide. It seems to me that with every south east, it only gets worse with the tide coming in. We make it to the narrows and sure enough, the skiff starts sinking back there. If it was up to me, I would have left Darren’s skiff up there. We already had the banana tied to the back and having two skiffs back there only heightens the risk of sinking because of how the waves splash in between and over the skiffs. Dad taught me how to maneuver in this kind of weather. He taught me how to go into the waves instead of being angled in them, even though there are bars, there’s a way to do it that’s a little less of a pain in the ass. You drive into the wave and then away from the wave and back towards. Basically I am zig zagging all the way down river. It doesn’t matter, it’s so ugly out that the skiff is back there sinking. Darren tells me to just keep going straight so he can get back there and bail the skiff out. He tells me not to turn sideways into the swell until he’s back in the boat. I’m steady going straight, going straight. I know the bar is coming up quick, we’re losing feet. 4 ft., 3ft., 2ft., 0. I hit the sand bar right outside of Big Hill and I have to turn. I can hear Darren back there yelling at me and I yell back “WE’RE ON THE BAR!” He quickly gets back into the boat and we finish our treacherous ride downriver. We park across the river by cannery island because the island helps shelter the boats from the south east wind. Now we have to go across the river in the skiff. WAHOO. Both of us get our life vests on and get in the skiff. Darren expertly takes us across the river with the waves, but we still have to go into the waves to get to our parking spot. The skiff was bouncing away and I can feel us do a jump and go airborne for a second. I’ve never jumped a skiff before, haha. FINALLY, we make it safely to the beach. We pull the skiff up and go home.
This story was one of my learning experiences fishing and captaining my boat. I drove the whole way and I was responsible for keeping us safe. There’s a lot more stories where this came from.
